Artifice
by Luc Court
Summary: Multichapter fic. Nooj makes a bargain with Rin. Because people who really want to die usually do so, or have another reason why they can't. Finished.
1. Default Chapter

**Artifice**  
_Rin vs. Nooj. Because people who really want to die usually do so, or have another reason why they can't. Artifice (n): a clever strategy usually intended to deceive or defraud; a skillfully contrived work; ingenuity._

They brought the boy in on a stretcher one afternoon. The temperatures were already too hot for their own good, sun-buzzing against pale stone walls, trebling the chocobo-stink outside. Warmth turned the air into water, humid enough to swim through and rise gasping for breath. Thinking about moving was exhausting. Actual exertion? Impossible.

Rin, sitting sequestered in his office in the very last room back, heard the handlers trundle their load down the line of rented chambers and into a spare. He didn't care. The addition of another guest was merely a sum of numbers in his books, figures to be tallied together and balanced by the end of the day. They swarmed in neat black lines on the tan sheafs. One was attempting to march all the way off the page.

Muffled murmur of conversation rose and fell through the walls. Mi'ihen's Travel Agency was full of foot traffic. Outside Rin's window, one of the chocobo stablers whistled the most irritating childhood ditty--the same eleven notes over and over again, endlessly trilling the fragmented rhyme.

_Sin came down the mountains._ Rin's mind automatically matched words to the tune. _Then we died again._

_Sin came down the mountains._

"Rin." The ripple of spoken Al Bhed slunk through the rattle of knuckles on wood. The door lurched open; Rin didn't look up. "You need to see this. There's a boy asking for machina services. They've just brought him in from Mushroom Rock."

A fly battered itself against the windowpane, performing counterpoint buzz. Rin frowned at the distractions. His nostrils flared; the visitor's shoes were thick with the reek of moist dirt, and quite possibly, chocobo droppings.

Outside, the stabler was still whistling.

_Sin came down the mountains._

Rin knuckled his temples until sparks hazed his vision, and the tiny knots of muscle began to weep. Below him, the ledgers waited expectantly. "Tell me why I should be interested."

"He's a Crusader."

- - - - -

A traveler from Guadosalam once said that Al Bhed had been born with swirling pupils, not so that they could see others, but so the world would not be able to see _them_. The Guado then went on to accuse Rin's irregular eyes as proof that the Al Bhed were granted the gift not to view the truth, but to _manipulate it_. Take it apart, just like a machina case, and then rework words to fit their needs.

In retrospect as he mulled it over later, Rin suspected that the bias was created by the size of the large chocobo maintenance bill he'd provided to the man, with ninety days to pay back the cost or be in default.

He used his eyes to glare at the newest charity case.

By the look of it, the local Al Bhed had taken money to haul in some scruff of a child off the road. Leather and canvas rested against the wall; the stretcher was paired with a makeshift crutch, one that was little better than two discarded spear-poles lashed together with cloth. A banner had been twisted around the top to provide limited padding. Rust-patches of blood speckled it like a map.

At first glance, Rin pinpointed the boy as a teenager. His hair was long as a temple dancer's. Unlike a performer, the locks were ragged in places, testaments to numerous encounters with fiends. Most Crusaders cut their hair short for exactly that reason, or wound the strands tight, coating them with evergreen sap-balm to keep stray chunks from slipping free. The joke among Mi'ihen's Al Bhed was that fiends could _smell_ a Crusader coming ten leagues in advance, and would know to run away before their nostrils were overwhelmed.

This boy's hair hung well past his waist. Loose.

_Arrogance_, Rin decided, before moving on to measure the rest.

The boy was sweating from the heat. Despite that, a dirt-streaked linen blanket covered him from the waist down, encompassing lumps of limbs beneath. Rin marked off these details with the same ease as an inspection of faulty cart goods. His practiced eye hunted for sign of a coin purse, then a waist pouch, and finally terminated at a single shirt pocket, much too flat to be anything but empty.

Al Bhed genetics could be mongrel-aggressive. The dominance of eye colors overrode mixed-breed children, bequeathing pale scalps and strong lungs, long muscles and bone. In a room filled with blonde shocks of hair, the boy looked completely out of place.

Also, Rin did not think he had any money on him, which only compounded the observation.

Rin wasted no time. He did not bother to sit.

"You are a Crusader?"

"I was." Dignified despite his injuries, the boy tried to lift his chin with pride. It did not tremble. "I was discharged after my accident. They said my only option was to live crippled, and that they couldn't retain someone who was unfit for combat. When I tried to prove otherwise, they barred me from the camp."

Absorbing this with glassy indifference, Rin folded his arms. "And why are you coming here?"

The opening forays had been performed. No stranger to mercantile discussion, the teenager picked his next words with visible care. "I know the Al Bhed are... good with machina. I've seen you use them before. In Luca, I once met a man who had lost his arm. It had been replaced by a metal one. You Al Bhed did it, didn't you."

The flat accusation earned a discordant murmur from the room.

Rin found his eyes narrowing even as his mind stirred at the promise of a new business opportunity. He ignored the generalized insult. "If this assumption were true," he drawled, "what kind would you require?"

Grim-mirthed, the boy reached down and whipped the blanket aside. The steam of raw tissue thickened the summer air. Instead of two healthy limbs burrowed beneath the covering, there was only piecemeal; one leg remained as a whole comparison to the other, which had been aborted above the knee. Where that second leg should have been, there was only a stump, puckered red and hot with healing. It lay as useless as a fat sausage on the sheets.

Lingering infection painted fiery streaks through the suffering flesh. The wound had been stressed, half the stitches come free when weight had been forced upon the hasty attempts to patch the bleeding. Whoever the field surgeon had been, they had peeled off a layer of skin from the missing joint and sewn it in a jagged cover for an amputation cap. It leaked a steady trail of clear fluid and pus.

Most of the local Al Bhed knew better than to interrupt Rin during business. One of them burst a question anyway, startled out of her silence by the magnitude of the injury. "What's your name?"

By the time the second word left her mouth, Rin was cutting through that inquiry with his own, ignoring both charity and grace. "How old are you?"

The boy matched his eyes first to the handler, and then back to Rin. "Fifteen." Satisfaction at their reaction kept his back stiff. "And my name is Nooj."

"Did your parents allow you to enlist?" Receiving no answer, Rin continued, sharp-tongued at the sight of the amputation. "I ask, because I wish to know how we will be paid for our services. If you do not have a family that is sponsoring you, then you must have another source of income."

Struck silent by the ruthless demand, the boy clenched his jaw tight.

Rin counted out the seconds. He reached ten before he gave a mournful shake of his head, and turned away. "Then I am afraid we cannot do business. Goodbye."

"Wait."

In the rasp of that protest, Rin heard volumes of dignity being choked back. The chorus of Al Bhed attendants stirred. Several of them shot sidelong glances at Rin, gifting him with pair upon pair of labyrinth pupils, all watching.

Rin savored their uncertainty. He estimated Nooj's patience as another man might count out granules of gold-dust before finally bringing his gaze back to bear upon the injured teenager, a slow twist that was made on leisure alone. "This is not generosity, my friend." Pitching his voice reasonable, Rin continued amiably. "I believe in profit. If you do not have any money, then we have no means of helping you, and must bid you goodbye."

Challenge flattened Nooj's eyes into cool slits. "I'll find a way to pay. Only get me able to walk again so that they'll let me back on the front lines. I promise you," the boy swore, his voice dark with absolute confidence, "I'll settle my debts then."

Allowing both brows to arch in polite disbelief, Rin raked lines of skepticism across the fresh wound of pride. "A cripple? Killing fiend bounties? We require much more than the paltry sums for Fangs or Ipiria lizards. It would take you years of hobbling around for us, and the interest rates will increase in the meantime."

"Just get me back out there," Nooj repeated. Buried anger swelled behind his features, but he kept it crushed underneath harsh determination. "Whatever your price is, I will meet it."

Silence engulfed the room. One man shifted his weight in a creak of buckled leather; another woman cleared her throat in a muted cough. Outside the window, Rin could hear the chocobo handler continuing to whistle.

_Sin came down the mountains._

He waited for a sign of weakness in the boy's resolve.

Nooj stared back.

_Then we died again._

"Very well." Over the surprised staccato of whispers behind him, Rin lifted his voice. "If you become fit enough to rejoin Yevon's Crusaders, then it is possible that they will see the use of our Al Bhed machina. There are numerous business opportunities that can arise from such a partnership. Someone see if there is a specialist _salryhel_ nearby! And bring in my accounts book," the man ordered, gathering his knee beneath him while he took a seat on the bed. The mattress creaked under the doubled weight. Rin felt Nooj's remaining foot nudge against him before the boy slid it away.

Two Al Bhed turned instantly to obey, pushing out the exit while another set began to fold up the stretcher. Tension melted in a rush. Nooj's crutch was knocked over with a clatter before gloved hands scooped it up and thrust it behind a chair; fluxing consonants mixed together as the Al Bhed workers began to disperse, chattering about dinner and the latest blitzball goals.

During the bustle of activity, Nooj sat frozen. Successful defiance had left him subdued, unwilling to move lest the decision be reversed. Stretched in offering on the bed, the oozing leg waited, flesh taunt and curling around the ruined stitches.

Rin ignored the leering amputation-wound as he busied himself with ticking numbers off one hand. "While this is not our primary business, Mi'ihen's Travel Agency will see what we can do for your condition. There are many additions which go along with a purchase such as this," the Al Bhed warned cheerfully. "To begin, I understand that there are body stockings which are customarily used for amputees. You must be careful to keep the stump clean and dry, or else I am told there will be inflammation. Next, there will be the cost of custom fitting."

Accepting the pen and ledger from one of the Al Bhed he had sent on errand, Rin flipped the book to a new page. "You will need to return once a year in order to have your measurements taken while you grow older. When you are twenty, we will outfit you for a final set that you may wear--"

"I won't need them." Nooj's mouth firmed in a smirk. He gave a bird-toss of his head, bitterly confident. The loose strands of his hair slapped the air. "I'll be dead long before then."

Rin's pen paused on its way down the rows of accounts. The Al Bhed's gaze wheeled up, lancing through the flippancy of Nooj's claim.

"You _will_ live," he retorted, cold. Mirroring the former Crusader's own defiance, Rin layered his blue eyes in a spiral-swept glare. "I do _not_ feel like paying for a Summoner to come all the way out here for you alone, and we would have to absorb the expense of cleaning this room from a death. Otherwise, do us the favor of pulling your own body off the road and slicing your throat where no one will be bothered by your pyreflies."

Blocked by Rin's sudden hostility, Nooj tasted the air wordlessly before he tried another tack. "So it's only money that's behind this?"

"No." Pressing down on the paper, the Al Bhed sketched the characters of Nooj's name on a fresh line. "It is because otherwise, you would be the most _ghastly_ Unsent that Spira has ever seen." A flourish sealed the newest entry to its bargained cost. "Of that, you can be sure."


	2. Chapter 2

The next week brought a string of rainy nights hurrying in. For days, the fog clustered in gossiping, pre-dawn clumps, unwilling to disperse until the rising sun finally blasted the clouds away. Summer heat milled aimless in the air. The Al Bhed who worked the Travel Agency did so half-asleep, rolling their words into long streams of nonsense while they procrastinated the day's business.

The soggy conditions turned Mi'ihen's Highroad into mud. It dried into crumbled crusts by noon, save for the deeper puddles which festered through the week. Bootprints were everywhere. Insects hummed.

Chocobo rentals were up.

Rin had succeeded in sending a messenger out before the inclement weather sapped everyone's energy. The closest machinist had been located at Djose Temple. He had been studying the natural phenomenon of electricity pouring into the tempest of stones, and had been willing to undertake the challenge of fitting a custom prosthetic. Zanni had been his name; heirless and a widower by the time he had worn fifty years on his back, and forever angry with the world as a result. Rin had met the man's grandchildren once, before they had been torn apart by Zu birds.

Zanni's temper clashed with that of the former Crusader. The elder Al Bhed had pulled ribbon after ribbon on Nooj's body, snapping out peckish orders for the boy to hold still while he finished measuring. Rin, serving as translator, had observed the process from his corner of the room and enjoyed the mounting tension on both their parts, including the brusque yank of Nooj's leg-stump into the air in order for Zanni to have a better look at it.

Nooj had scowled. The machinist had as well, but tightly-wrapped blueprints had been dropped in Rin's lap the next evening so that he could approve the materials.

On the fifth day of storms, the rains had eventually withdrawn, tucking themselves back into the overcast cloud cover. Breakfast that morning had been scrambled eggs mixed with whatever else had been lying around the kitchens, and the breeze from the Travel Agency smelled like tomato and barley. Pots of thick, black tea had been brewed, the Al Bhed mercilessly raiding the bags of leaves imported from fields near the Calm Lands. The taste was as rancid as oil. Everyone drank up.

Nooj skipped eating whenever the meal was communal. His time was spent hobbling on the struts that now served in place for his leg. At first Zanni had left the knee joint loose, in order to provide full range of motion, but Nooj's weight had buckled every time he'd set his foot improper and had gone tumbling to the ground. Now it had been recalibrated, but the model still ranged between too stiff, and too flexible.

Once the last adjustments had been made, nothing could have kept the former Crusader from practice with the new limb. He had chosen to forgo the makeshift crutch that necessity forced him to wield before, taking up a squat length of fence-bracing instead. Fingers clenched around the makeshift cane, the teenager dredged his weight through the halls of the Travel Agency until he was steady enough to brave the outdoors.

The Al Bhed workers had pointed the teenager to one of the pastures nestled in the crags of the Old Highroad. They watched him lurch irregular steps down along the path, and that was how Rin found out where Nooj had gone; he followed the trail his employees had been mocking.

Nooj did not say anything when he first noticed his guest, only tensing his spine while he performed his disjointed stretches with a brutal patience.

Rin observed the teenager from his perch on a ranch stile. The Al Bhed had brought an account ledger so that he could work on billings--an excuse, so he would not remain idle--but did not so much as open it once before it went propped underneath his arm, the pen wiggling between his fingers. The engraved heart-nib bounced between his knuckles.

"Tie back your hair or you will catch it in the joints," the Al Bhed advised, drolly amused when the boy stopped in mid-crutch, cursing as his scalp was yanked sideways by an errant screw.

Fighting to steady himself and rip the strands free, Nooj shot the Al Bhed a poisonous glare from the bridge of his shoulder. "I didn't ask for your commentary."

Unruffled, Rin spun the ink-pen once more in his hand.

"I am simply observing my investment."

True enough. Food, lodgings, and now machina parts; many of the Mi'ihen Al Bhed whom Rin kept on employ were wondering why this teenager was allowed leniency. The founder of the Travel Agencies was notorious for his ruthless business practices. Tragic cases had pled for aid in the past--penniless sailors from Kilika, starving traders from Macalania--and while Rin had not turned them all away, he had always been ready with an itemized transaction list before the first week was up.

Nooj had received no bill. Though he had been threatened with one when Rin caught him on the floor of the kitchen in the middle of the night, his leg-stump an open sore from being overstressed, the former Crusader had not been pressured to pay. He had not even been shown a statement.

Rin had justified his tolerance by explaining that Nooj was little more than a walking advertisement. Upon hearing this, a number of the other Al Bhed had laughed.

_More like a _crawling_ advertisement, eh?_

Remembering this as he observed the teenager struggle, Rin found his mouth creasing in a smile. He swallowed the expression down. If it was one thing that the architect of the Travel Agencies had learned, it was to watch for the long shots. There was no better gamble than Nooj. Older adults had buckled under disabilities and crumpled down; others, weary of the endless tepid days, had found the release of the kitchen knife or poison. Nooj had chosen none of those options.

Rin also knew how to bide his time.

With a final wrench of his hand, Nooj pulled the rest of his hair free and let it shake out of his fingers. "When will the final parts come in?"

"Soon enough." The haze of moist wood in his nose, Rin shifted his weight on his perch. "We are ordering through the Thunder Plains, and there is always a delay at this time of year. It would be to all of our advantages if the Al Bhed were allowed to secure a solution for that dangerous place, but Yevon seems determined to languish in its own prejudice." Fabric crinkled as Rin shrugged.

Nooj's baleful stare scanned the lazy attitude of the Al Bhed. The teenager threw forth his next question. "Will I be able to rejoin the Crusaders before then?"

Rin knew it was a caustic reminder of everything Nooj had lost, to sit upon the fence with one leg sprawled and the other effortlessly keeping his balance in check. Despite that, he didn't change position. "Why are you in such a hurry?" The ink-pen went over his knuckles again before the Al Bhed flipped it out in a baton pointing directly at the teenager. "But, your answer is yes. You should be able to. Are you taking your company away from us so soon?"

"I would rather lose my other leg than stay here a day longer than I'd have to."

"Be careful what you wish for." An insect burrowed out of the damp wood-pulp as Rin's eyes walked the fence, the death-skull markings of its carapace a defiant spot of white in the dark. "Sin might just be listening."

His only reply was a muffled thud, punctuated with a bitter curse.

Nooj had set his ankle wrong, and the slick grasses had caused the teenager to skid. Foot going one way, cane going another, and his body the third; Nooj caught his fall with the heel of his hand, smearing green stains across the palm as he narrowly missed striking his chin against a rock.

Rin counted the price of dignity on his fingers before he pushed himself off the fence, pinching his ledger and pen together with his thumb.

Nooj remained sprawled in the field as the Al Bhed walked over. He ignored the man in favor of groping for the cane which had rolled several feet away. Squatting with his boots in the smeared mud, Rin watched the teenager push himself forward an inch with his fingers outstretched, attempting to tease the stick closer. Brown hair, unwound and free, lay in coils in the dirt.

When he offered a hand out, Nooj only cast him a derisive glare.

"Is my humiliation the real price you demand?" Trying to scrape for the cane once more, Nooj turned his face away from the help. "Do you enjoy seeing me vulnerable like this, having to ask your Travel Agency for survival?"

"I would not say no," Rin admitted. Blunt honesty lent itself well to mockery out of his cinnamon throat. "If I am to monitor your reckless progress, the least that you can do is to entertain me."

The first part of Nooj's reply was cut off by a triumphant grunt as the teenager finally curled his fingers around his walking stick. He yanked it back in a sharp sweep. Rin watched the tip hiss by his nose, but did not flinch back.

"Entertaining yourself by watching _death_." Nooj's humor was a cough out of his throat, a dry husk of lizard venom. "I wouldn't have thought you'd find that profitable."

Rin found that he was not impressed.

"Yes." His mouth dropped clipped words. "Naturally, it is _rare_ that I ever see death at all. Every day, I and all the rest of the Al Bhed on Mi'ihen are safe as children. Death is an event which occurs to the elderly, and always in peace." Practical, brows lifted in careless arcs, Rin continued relentlessly. "Because we Al Bhed seem so careless, we must be ignorant of the greater facts of life. Now get out of the field before the chocobos are released for their lunch feeding."

"Don't patronize me." With a wince, Nooj pushed himself up into a sitting position, rolling on the hip of the uninjured leg in order to rebalance himself. He did not look up. "You've made yourself clear."

As the teenager shifted his weight onto his cane, Rin snapped out his ledger book to interrupt him. It met the walking stick with a clack and stayed there. Forced to acknowledge it or have his support swept out from under him, Nooj hauled his gaze up from the muddied grass and forced it on the Al Bhed.

Rin met it, and then looked through him, blue eyes disavowing the bile he saw in brown.

"Do you know how the Al Bhed manage to survive, without following Yevon?" The question was deceptively smooth. Retaining his imprisonment of the cane with one hand, Rin lifted the other. He tapped it against the air, keeping time with his speech. "We do not believe in the use of the Farplane. We do not have summoners either. But Al Bhed can become fiends just as easily as anyone else who has died. So how have we managed to keep from being overrun by our own dead?"

Nooj's impassive stare tracked Rin's finger as it waved, impelled by lecture.

"It is because we try to come to terms with our own mortality while being alive. And we accept when we must kill those of us who have not been able to, and have become monsters. Still, we know better than to jeopardize ourselves needlessly." Finding his sudden inspiration stalled, exhausted of impetus, Rin slid his ledger back and rested it against his knees.

"You are my investment. I do not know why you persist on this course of action, but it will make a difference when I plan to reorder spare parts."

Leather creaked as Nooj rolled his weight forward onto his remaining knee and shoved against the support of his cane. The teenager lurched to his feet with the poetry of an unfolding shoopuf. Only when he was standing again did he deign to speak; facing away, towards the gnarled hills surrounding the Old Highroad, into the wilderness where only fiends dared.

"My reasons..."

In the distance, fragments of Al Bhed drifted through the air as the handlers shouted back and forth to one another. Merry.

"... are none of your business."

His metal foot left a swath of crushed grass as he dragged himself away.

Nothing Rin said could call him back.


	3. Chapter 3

They didn't hear from the former Crusader for six months after that, until Nooj was nearly forgotten--another of Rin's gambles that had panned out poor. Zanni's rolls of blueprints had been shelved. The entirety of Nooj's file consisted of a sparse note clipped to the tube, a tally of the cost of time and effort that had never been delivered.

When the teenager finally stooped to contacting the Travel Agency, he did so through mail. The missive was passed from hand to hand before it finally landed on Rin's desk, covered with souvenir fingerprints in grease-smear marks.

The return address listed a Crusaders branch in Luca. The sender, a junior officer named Nooj.

"Guess he's still alive," sang out one of the traders as he delivered the rest of the courier bag, hefting it carelessly onto a stack of outgoing accounts. The stained leather of the satchel told coy stories to Rin's paperwork. "Hallon owes me fifty gil."

"I would have expected the boy to have choked on his own metal toes by now," was Rin's dry agreement. His nimble fingers had already seized the envelope and were slashing it open with the knuckle of one thumb.

The trader seated himself on the edge of the desk, toying with the strap-rigging lined along his shin.

"Well?"

"_He_ says," Rin stated, his shoulders aggressively neutral as he read the hard-stroked print, "that he will be meeting me on the fifth day of this month, on the Djose side of the Moonflow." Letting the paper fall from his fingers, the Al Bhed rolled his blue eyes to the ceiling, and sighed. "That is tomorrow. Someone have a chocobo ready for me."

The length of the trip required riding through the night--a hazardous venture at best. Rin stole his dinner while in the saddle, unwrapping hastily mixed breads and meats from waxed paper cradles, and losing half when the chocobo bounced over a rock. The reed lantern-staff that had been strapped to the saddlebags jiggled and swung its flame like a jeering pendulum. It drenched the landscape he rode through in hazard's reds and gold.

Rin found himself waiting for bandits. Or fiends, boiling out of the chill darkness, and that kept him occupied for the duration of the ride so that he did not wonder why he was honoring the meeting at all.

Dawn found him yawning, squinting his eyes closed against fatigue that tasted of a jostled stomach and loaf crumbs. His stop at Djose Temple was only long enough to swallow down caustic mouthfuls of hot black tea. Lightning crackled in the thin morning light as he watched the stones revolve, charging the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck, and the sheen of blue static glossed over Rin's cup while he drank.

Two refills later and he had unhooked his chocobo from its post, pulling himself back into the saddle with an ache in his legs that warned of overlong riding. Rin dismissed it. Noon met him and passed while he journeyed; other travelers flashed by, strangers in the dust. He napped in sporadic trances during the ride. When his eyes began to fall too heavy, Rin stole a handful of minutes asleep beside the shelter of a fallen tree. He woke with road-sweat on his neck and face, scraping it away with a corner of his shirt before returning to his trip.

By the time the forests of the Moonflow began to rise up in frond-waves of green, the Al Bhed was hunched in his seat. He pulled in the final distance slow. The steps of the chocobo mount were awkward; plumage clamped tight, head lowered, the beast was ragged with exhaustion. It did not wander when Rin slid down from its back, but only sunk immediately to the ground, black pearl-eyes scrolling shut while its chest heaved.

Rin looped the reins around the nearest tree and went looking for the Crusader.

He found Nooj as a lone figure, well away from the main riverbanks where the setting sun gleamed off clusters of metal helmets and armor. It dipped white linens in firelight, changing pale weaves into orange. Wooden boards had been laid out in irregular rows and numerous cloth bundles stretched out upon them, wide diamonds at the top before narrowing down to pairs of anonymous feet.

Nooj was watching the dead.

Soldiers mingled in audience with the fallen, their weapons slung in easy reach on their belts. The pyrefly trickle that bled out of the corpses mixed with the spirits that wandered along the Moonflow waters. Rin, watching the rainbow display, only found himself desperate for a soft bed.

"I should hate you for the trouble you have put me through." The first words out of the Al Bhed's mouth came easily. The second arrived with a yawn that wrenched his eyes closed and blurred them with moisture. "Why could you not have made this trip closer?"

Nooj did not stir as he heard the Al Bhed's approach, but only inclined his head. "My squad had to wait for a summoner for our fallen. We sent someone to Guadosalam, but the Guado's maester was away at Bevelle, and there was no one else who could be spared. We had to bribe this one to delay her pilgrimage."

No apology was in the teenager's voice. The bitter youth that Rin had met six months ago had vanished, swept underneath a veneer of restored dignity. Returning to the Crusaders had poured living patience back into the angry, crippled child that had hobbled out of the Travel Agency and back into his own world. Yevon's realm.

Crunching up the gravel of the path, the Al Bhed stopped at the tree Nooj was leaning against. The teenager's hair still had not been tied up, and it ran in a rebellious waterfall over the Crusader's back. Rin wrinkled his nose. "That does _not_ explain why you made me come all the way out here, instead of visiting Mi'ihen--"

"Look at it." Nooj cut through the complaint with the ease of a knife. His face remained turned towards the shimmering riverbanks. "Just look. Over there. There is the truth of Spira."

On the Moonflow, a woman was dancing.

Water dripped from her bare feet as she twisted her waist around, following the arc of her hands held parallel as a blind man might, fingers stretched into the air. Between her thumbs balanced a staff that was decorated with long lashes, feather-bound. On the downstrokes, the downy tufts struck the surface of the river and dragged matted ripples that splashed fresh drops with every revolution.

Pyreflies drifted from the bodies that were laid out in wrapped offering. They congealed around the woman, drawn to the invisible vortex she was building with the whirlpool of her dance. Thick enough to hide her features, the spirits swarmed in rainbows. The woman walked on water in a miracle of pleated skirts and death.

Rin observed the show through a dull cynicism induced by the road. "You mean, the summoner?"

"The _pyreflies_." Nooj's fingers tightened on his cane. The carved hook of wood gleamed as the mahogany polish caught the dimming sunset. It mirrored the embered intensity in the teenager's eyes; Nooj wet his lips with his tongue as he spoke, fixated on the ritual. "Being Sent. Returning to the Farplane where they belong."

Such enthusiasm was not evoked from the Al Bhed. "You look as if you lust after them. Why don't you save such things for a woman? Or," Rin added, tart in his pique, "a man, if that is more to your liking?"

Sarcasm broke the spell around the teenager.

"I take it you don't like them."

"There is nothing to like." Reaching up, Rin yanked the riding goggles off from his forehead, feeling the stickiness of sweat trapped beneath. He ran the moist strap through his fingers, irritated. "The dead become fiends. There are some Al Bhed who believe that pyreflies can interfere with machina, if there are too many of them. You should not play with them either," he added pointedly, "not with your leg."

The teenager breezed over Rin's warning. "And is your opinion of summoners much the same?"

With a snap, Rin bounced the rubber sealing of the goggle-lenses off a fingertip. "We would be foolish to turn them down, but we do not rely upon them." His answer was rote. "Let Yevon spend its charity on us heathens. We are not in their debt."

Nooj fell silent, abandoning the temporary warming of his voice. Out on the waters, the woman continued to spin. The sun coated her in liquid gold, shattering off the river currents until it seemed as if she were dancing on a smithy's forge.

Once he found himself unable to clean even the pretense of grime off his goggles, Rin spoke up again. "Why?"

"I passed my sixteenth year last month." The revelation, volunteered, slipped unexpectedly out of Nooj's customary reclusiveness. His face tipped against a low-hanging branch; leaves dotted green against brown hair. "I almost forgot about it, but my ranking officer in the Crusaders remembered it from my file. They said," the teenager announced, leather creaking as he leaned further into the tree trunk, "they were impressed with your work. Even, that they might start thinking about Al Bhed machina in the future." Nooj shrugged. His cane scraped against the small pebbles of the road. "On a limited scale."

Caught aback by the nonsequitur of personal information and not yet able to weigh its worth, Rin defaulted to business. "Indeed." The word was detached. "I have received an order last month from a Crusader division near Macalania. They wish to try a type of Al Bhed pistol. I assume they must have encountered you?"

"They must." Neither confirming nor denying the question, Nooj bit down his next reply until it forced itself out from his throat. He twisted his shoulders to glare at the Al Bhed, staring directly at Rin for the first time since he arrived. "Well?" His voice spiraled up, belligerent, violated pride finally showing through. "Is that enough? Is my debt over?"

Envisioning months of hectic rides in exchange for not cutting his losses, Rin met the challenge with a resentful eye. "It could be."

The Crusader broke first.

"My mobility isn't good enough," Nooj declared. He dropped his gaze, pulled his cane closer to his body with a hand. "I can't cross the Thunder Plains like this, not unless I want to be blackened to a crisp. Plus, I can't respond fast enough in combat yet. I'll need more."

"That is your fault for not waiting for your upgrade. May I remind you that _you_ were the one who abandoned the final parts?" Turning away from the teenager and leaning his back against the tree, Rin barked a dry-throated laugh. The absurdity of the situation was overwhelming, magnified by weariness. "You really thought that you could just make it on the basics. I should tell you--your recklessness is so great that many of my employees have started to call you _taydrcaagan_, a seeker of death. I believe the name most certainly fits."

Uncertainty spread across Nooj's brown, clot-pupil eyes. It mutated just as swift into an anger that clouded the iris-colors and tainted them murky as silt.

"Are you saying no?"

"We Al Bhed have a saying for things like that. It goes: _fyga ib, tispycc_." Confident that Nooj was no further educated in that language than he had been before, Rin braced his spine against the tree and pushed off it in a roll of his feet. Balance gave the Al Bhed only passing note; Rin felt the

world swerve, unsteady, but he tossed his head up in a defiance against exhaustion.

"As you said before, I am an opportunist. This means that I do not enjoy seeing the strain on my latest investment." Weariness lent a furry, giddy edge to the world. Rin forged ahead, ignoring the warning signs of his body. "If you are going to be a Crusader for Yevon and wear machina upon your body, at least _pretend_ to have the staying power of an Al Bhed." Racial pride marched off Rin's tongue to a drumroll caramel-bitter. "You will need to attend your regular maintenance schedule. Should I believe you capable of this, seeker of death?"

Breath bent back upon itself as Nooj gave a snort of contempt. "You don't know anything about me."

"Yes," Rin snapped back, so fast that he nearly shot the end off the teenager's voice. "But unfortunately, I must know _everything_ about you."

Distant at the riverbanks, the muttering of the Crusaders twined around the rising hum of night insects. Darkness had prowled in while the two had been speaking, and now it swallowed Nooj's legs and most of the woods beside. Behind them, Rin could hear the chirping squeaks of his chocobo fallen into slumber.

His hand found Nooj's face with surprising ease, sprawling its palm across the bridge of the teenager's nose.

"Understand this: I do not care if you die." Pressing his fingers on Nooj's cheekbones, Rin watched the skin pale beneath his bronze. "Only do so in a way that does not place my equipment at fault. This is your payment to us, _taydrcaagan_. When you came to us begging for charity, we should have turned you away. Then you could have died as you wanted, a nameless casualty on the road, unmourned and forgotten. Instead, you wanted dignity. You wanted to purchase a lie, and that, I have given you _flawlessly_. It is up to you to uphold it now. Think of something that is better than _carelessness_."

The temptation to squeeze harder burned. Rin's eyes felt like dry marbles as he glared, hot and threaded with road dust. Years of discipline had trained the sharp desert ruthlessness running in the Al Bhed's mind. He knew to prefer the patience of the merchant, buying out laws that could not be directly fought.

Some rules, however, cared for no price.

Against Rin's skin, the teenager formed words, burring them out despite the proximity of flesh.

"I don't think I like you as a business partner."

Heat from Nooj's breath washed over Rin's palm. His grip slackened, eased until he was only touching the Crusader's face instead of forcing the skin taut against Nooj's face. When he took his fingers away, the release of pressure returned color to the skin in a slow flush of blood. "The feeling may be mutual."


	4. Chapter 4

For weeks after the hectic ride, Rin was unable to banish memory of the trip to the Moonflow. He had no explanation for his sudden deviance from schedule. Pride could not have justified; it would be been more appropriate to require Nooj to visit Mi'ihen, rather than yielding timeframes. True, Rin had risen to the challenge. Success did not erase saddle-sores.

Why did he make the trip? Six months of hearing nothing from the teenager, Nooj having skipped out on the final parts for his leg rather than wait for them to arrive. Six months of quiet before the terse letter had been delivered to the Travel Agency, and Rin had decided to follow up on it rather than wait another half-year until the next one.

In all rights, Rin should have left the boy to rot and tallied his losses there.

The idea that he might have been concerned about the teenager was ludicrous. Rin considered it once, and then promptly shoved it to the back of his mind, where it was ordered to gather dust.

The previous months-long silence was not repeated. Now Nooj showed up for his scheduled appointments, or sent word ahead of time when he would be late, rather than leave them all wondering if he had finally met his end in a fiend's jaws. The Al Bhed of Mi'ihen's Travel Agency grew to be familiar with his routine visits, accusing Nooj of being impervious to mortality each time they heard his cane scrape across the front stoop.

Nooj, the Deathseeker. Nooj, the Undying.

Rin always made sure to have another translator around; he did not spend any more time in the teenager's presence than was absolutely required.

The irregularity ground against Rin's sensibilities. Through annoyance alone, Nooj had been elevated from financial account all the way into hobby. A particularly contrary one. He lacked the verve of the Al Bhed, but nurtured a rebellious streak that would have done better defying Yevon than working for them.

Nooj could accomplish much more, if only he stayed alive.

"The boy is an _idiot_," was all Rin said, after each of the Crusader's visits. "He has every opportunity for life, and yet he wishes only for death. At the same time, he is _determined_ to survive. He is independent, motivated to build his own path for his desires, and willing to defy tradition in order to do it. And yet, so _stubborn!_ I have never _seen_ such a mixture before."

The other Al Bhed, used to the impassioned diatribes, only passed the sugar around the lunch table while they each flavored their tea. Several would exchange private glances while they watched the Travel Agency's founder. Occasional comments about similarity and resemblances would drift through.

One would invariably speak up. "How high is his bill now, Rin?"

"High enough," Rin always answered, and then turned his gloom into his cup.

- - - - -

Despite the unresolved issue between them, the teenager provided more profit than irritation. Orders from various Crusader stations kept trickling in. Yevon may have sponsored the defense units, but Bevelle's regulation machina were susceptible to jamming and damp weather. Given the choice between fiends and potential heresy, the Crusaders were slowly gravitating towards the latter.

Their demonstration of a survival instinct pleased Rin. While the Al Bhed's weapons were still openly banned from membership in Yevon's personal army, the owner of the Travel Agency calculated that it would only be a matter of time before the tables began to turn.

The piercing tang of winter was on the air. Mi'ihen was blessed in comparison to its sister locations; warmer than Macalania by far, and more temperate than the Thunder Plains. While storms could wash out the roads and leave swampy ruts that threatened to swallow passing wagons, the weather on Mi'ihen was rarely cruel.

While the seasons rarely changed for the Highroad, the passage of time was still observed through routine celebration. Many Al Bhed had requested leave to visit family members gathered at Home, and Rin arranged extra pay for those who agreed to stay and work through the holidays.

For his part, the creator of the Travel Agencies had no direct ties to concern himself with. There was a distant cousin that connected Rin to other small tribes that ran through the Al Bhed genealogy; a nephew of an aunt by a second wedding on another side, loosely netting him into the collective whole by tenuous fishhooks of blood. He rarely saw them. They occasionally wrote.

With two days to go before the Agency was to be cleaned up, Rin locked himself into his office. Only leaving the room for sporadic meals and to refill his black tea, the Al Bhed pulled tally after tally out of the ledgers, methodically comparing them to previous years and projecting future totals.

Trading with Yevon would be high, as the temples upped their own purchases of garlands and bolts of cloth for their endless ritual banners. Besaid's fabrics, renowned across Spira, required shipping routes that could haul them all the way up to Bevelle. Macalanian performers would be exporting instruments; athletes in Luca would need medicinal ointments from Kilika in time for the blitzball season.

It looked to be a profitable future.

Rin did not look up when his door was pounded upon, one hand splayed over a mercantile record from Kilika and the other fumbling in a desk drawer. He'd stored the customary good-luck charm there last year so that he would not lose it, but in the tribulations of business, it had either been moved or lost.

The charm was not an expensive trinket. It consisted of a parchment with carefully scribbled coordinates--locations of every Travel Agency, safehouses where Al Bhed could request machina parts or send messages to Home. One of his employees had fashioned two thin sheets of bronze to sandwich around the paper and keep it safe. Rin liked to hang it up during festivals as a reminder of how far the Al Bhed had spread across Spira, while still managing to retain a cohesive language and culture. Suspended by a red ribbon in a doorway or underneath an arch, the charm would catch the light and send it spinning out in flash-darts down the halls.

Now. Was it in the other drawer?

Another series of knocks.

When the third round of drumming came, Rin's patience spasmed. "_Ku cfymmuf vena!_" The curse lashed out against the intruder; his knuckles jammed against a corner of the drawer and scraped against a splinter. Sticking his wounded finger in his mouth, the Al Bhed twisted to resume the quest with his other hand.

He missed the rasp of the door being shoved open. Then a flash of color hooked the corner of his vision, and Rin craned his head back up over the lip of the desk.

The visitor moved in jerky puppet motion, hops of motor control that resembled a crippled bird. A ragged coat of red leather had been sliced at a diagonal angle, leaving half the material absent, running over only one side of its body. One crutch poked out from underneath an arm. Even though the familiar mass of dark hair had finally been reined back into a tight cordon tail, Rin recognized the figure instantly.

Nooj.

Diagrams unrolled in a wing-flap of data, flexing lines of measurements all over Rin's ledgers.

Nooj's hand had flung out a waxy sheet of diagrams upon the Al Bhed's desk. The other was hidden underneath the half-cloak which sulked over his left side and partially obscured the man's artificial leg.

Far too experienced to be at all unnerved, Rin straightened from his search and delivered an unimpressed stare. Silence was the comparative gauntlet thrown upon the threadworn carpet; Nooj eyed him back, defiant rancor already turning sour in the teenager's posture.

"_Ku cfymmuf vena_," Rin repeated, neatly informative. "It means, please go away. Now."

Nooj did not move. After the brief skirmish of pupils and iris, Rin looked down at the blueprints which sprawled over his books. Measurements jumped out, deftly penned in an engineer's script--too careful with the numbers, gawky with words. He observed the cost of materials listed in the Al Bhed tongue.

Then he noticed the joint type.

"Congratulations," the Al Bhed announced blandly. "The _Taydrcaagan_ has only succeeded halfway. Again."

Nooj's lips performed a twisted curve.

Rin did not retreat. "Show me."

Underneath the scrutiny of black-swirled eyes, the teenager struggled his visible hand over his body in order to tug up the cloak. The motion revealed an empty hollow where a set of fingers should have waved. Wrist, forearm, elbow--all were missing, replaced by a stump that had been torn off halfway from the left shoulder joint. White bandages wrapped around the bulge. The dressings had gone yellow with underlying pus.

When Nooj shifted his weight, the moist smell that reached Rin's nostrils warned of tissue decay.

Rin's eyes slid past the injury he knew had been aggressively neglected. He slapped the backs of his knuckles against the blueprints. The paper made a satisfying _tak_ of protest beneath his fingernails. "This is not a standard model for an arm replacement. It is designed for gripping machina rifles. Who created this?" he demanded. "And why do you want it?"

"There were two Al Bhed staying in the same village as my squad." Nooj's attitude had not changed during the weeks that had stolen more of his body away. An overtone of dry amusement recited the tale. "We spoke with them over dinner--hunted fiends together for a time, before my arm was taken. One of them studied my leg and came up with this idea. As for the second question, do you even have to ask?" Releasing the ragged cloak, Nooj returned his grip to the crutch. "I want something that will allow me back into combat."

Friendship with the Al Bhed. The image of goggles and gas masks mixing in with the stalwart armor of Yevon's Crusaders should have been astonishingly laughable. Impossible.

At least, before now.

"As interesting as I find it to be, how you sell yourself piece by piece to us," Rin remarked, "you have failed to properly achieve your goals this time--and you have lost the arm that is on your wounded side. It will look like our fault. How is that good publicity?"

Practicality was on Nooj's side. "I can't walk with a cane if I don't have a working arm." He rotated his wrist, fanning the crutch wide in display. "The best I can do is use this. I _need_ the replacement in order to walk properly. There's no choice."

"And yet," Rin countered, "if we help equip you, you will only rush out and lose another embarrassing body part. Perhaps your other leg? We may be able to rig you up with a metal cart if you continue like this. Just imagine how Yevon would like _that_."

All traces of humor faded from Nooj's visage, replaced by a dim promise of a scowl. "Just give me the equipment."

"No." Rin's finger rapped the blueprints, crinkling the lines. "This is a valuable allocation of materials. It will make our products look shabby if they cannot even keep a single Crusader alive.

I will not help you."

"Call the machina builder--"

"Zanni hates you." Swelling anger stripped all decorum out of Rin's throat, twisting each word clear and cold. "He says you have no respect for his work. Anyway, he is in Besaid, and it would take a week to contact him--let alone arrange for his passage back. He is too old for frequent ocean journeys." The tirade tasted like rancid apples as it rushed out of Rin's mouth, but he found he could not stem its tide. "We have been nothing but generous to you, _taydrcaagan,_ and still you have only further demands!"

"Generous?" Nooj's voice matched Rin's higher temper, rising in a flare of defensiveness. "I thought this was _business_."

Sound rolled around the office, burying itself in the bookshelves.

Rin took a breath.

"You are correct." Teeth wrestled against each other as the Al Bhed felt his jaw clenching tight. "I am here for profit, _taydrcaagan._ It does not matter to me if you truly wish to perish. I have no particular interest either way." The reminder was tiresome even as he repeated it, but Rin pressed on dutifully. "However, if you wish maintenance and care of your prosthetics, then you must uphold your end of the bargain with us. _Stop losing limbs_," he spat, plain-tongued for a rare moment. "Most of us are born with four, and we have the good sense to keep them."

"You sound like a grey-haired grandfather, nattering on like that." Joviality mixed with latent hostility formed the brunt of Nooj's charge against the Al Bhed. The teenager's mouth smirked with an adult's scorn. "Are you going to ground me next? Tell me I can't go back out to fight until I have my machina polished?"

"If you were my son," Rin started, bitter enough that he thought he tasted his own stomach acid in the back of his throat before he calmed, and grudgingly reformed his words.

"...I would charge you doubled rates."

Nooj's hair snicked around his shoulders as he turned his head hard, staring fixedly at a spot on the wall over Rin's shoulder.

"You are a unique case, _taydrcaagan_." Blue eyes ached like overlarge marbles in Rin's skull as he glared; he thought of the Guado's ninety-day chocobo bill, and accused deception. "You lie every single time you go out to fight Sinspawn. You let others believe that you are helping them, but in reality, you are only trying to kill yourself on their time. Because you allow them to think you care about their safety, they support you by giving you food, clothing, shelter. You have been deceiving them all along, _taydrcaagan_, but you cannot pull the same trick on _me_.

"Now you wish me to indulge you again at the possible risk of a highly-trained _sylrehecd_ being lost to Sin at sea. Get out of my office," Rin ordered, his face composed of black ice even as he rose to his feet, wiping the blueprints in a crackling chorus off the desk. "_Ku yfyo._"

- - - - -

Nooj did not leave that evening. He did not leave in the morning either, choosing to scrape his crutch up and down the halls while visitors to the Mi'ihen Travel Agency whispered behind their hands after he hobbled by, eyes upon the metal of his leg. The Al Bhed workers, occupied with the task of scouring the building clean in time for the holidays, only watched the silent war between their supervisor and a pet project that had become anything but.

When the third morning of this methodical resistance continued, Rin finally sought the teenager out.

He found the Crusader in one of the guest rooms that had managed to avoid seasonal decoration, and broke immediately into barter-patter, smooth as a noontide sea. "Everywhere I have gone, my employees tell me that the _Taydrcaagan_ is scaring customers," he declared. "You are making us lose business. Also, I have been told that you have not yet paid for your room. Do you think that clean linens are free?"

Nooj, trapped against the windowsill beneath Rin's scrutiny, only made a careless shrug with his crutch. "I don't have anywhere else to go like this, do I?"

The scant days had been a war for Rin to calm his own temper. Seeing the teenager again nearly revived it.

"We will eat. And then we will talk about this."

One day into the week-long gathering, and intoxicants had already been raided by many of the Travel Agency staff. It was customary to prepare basic stews and breads for the meals--all food that could be gathered easily on the roads, and just as quickly eaten. Machina oil was an oft-joked ingredient, but only added when the Al Bhed were extraordinarily drunk.

Rin stopped long enough by the kitchens to request two trays. He carried both in his hands while Nooj followed him to his office, breathing in the aroma of thick breads meant to sop up the meat broth of the stew. Fresh, raw carrot slices dotted the sides of the bowls. Tradition meant for harsh digestion at times, but for one week out of the year, Rin found that he could manage.

Once inside his office, Rin promptly cleared away room on his desk for the meal, settling the trays down where spatters would not accidentally stain nearby papers. Nooj, bending himself into a chair, paused long enough to retrieve a pair of clear lenses from a pocket before he accidentally sat on them. One earpiece was bent crooked; the Crusader pinched it back into shape, reconstructing the sloping curve.

Rin stared as the teenager slid the spectacles onto his nose. "Your glasses," he began, lifting his hand in an open-palmed demand for explanation.

"Hereditary." Nooj straightened the nosepiece with a push of a finger, and then leaned his crutch against another chair where it would not slide. "My father needed them, and so did both of his parents. When my targeting accuracy began to fail a few months ago, my squad stopped in Bevelle to get me outfitted."

"I imagine that the priests had much to say about your current condition," Rin drawled. Rankled for reasons he could not define, the Al Bhed simply voiced the tail-end of his thoughts. "We could have equipped you with spectacles here in Mi'ihen. Even... with a cheaper rate."

"But I didn't come to you."

The statement dangled in the air and kicked its heels, hung by its neck while it died.

Rin found himself silent, dissecting the six words and wondering why they mattered more than the weight of the air that was used to speak them. Reaching no conclusion that did not verge upon frustration, the Al Bhed uncovered the platter of fresh bread. "What did Bevelle have to say about your prosthetic?" Lifting a knife, he deftly half-cut, half-tore a piece off, using both hands for the task without thinking. He dipped it into his dinner soup, taking a bite.

"They required me to stay in Bevelle for a week so that they could review the use of my heathen machina." Nooj's hand shook out the napkin over his bowl, and set it aside. "In the end, they gave their permission, and warned that they'd be keeping a close eye on me."

_Heathen machina_. Rin found himself smirking around the crust of his bread. "Did you expect anything else from them? Tell me that you did not expect any _help_ from Yevon, in the event that you became damaged as one of their Crusaders."

"No," Nooj said, voice flushing hot even though his cheeks were plain. "I thought they would ignore me while I _died_."

Steam from the soup-bowls flattened out and faded away on the air.

Nooj did not try to reach for the bread knife, choosing to go without rather than struggle one-handed.

Openly observing the teenager with a long eye that measured the missing gaps where limbs used to be, Rin let his face grow polished with cynicism. Hard. "You are doing a very good job of that."

"Cleanly. Not like this." Skimming his hand over the platter, Nooj finally selected a fork. He picked at one of the carrots, spearing it in half. "Fighting Sin and giving up my life to it was all I had ever planned for. I'll be seventeen next spring. I was fourteen when I first joined the Crusaders. All this time, and even the monsters thwart me. I don't expect anything better from Yevon, either."

Rin watched the vegetable slice disappear between the teenager's teeth. "The way you are acting now, you will almost certainly become a fiend unless you are able to come to terms with your passing." Reaching across the table for the pepper-grinder, Rin tapped a few flakes out. They drifted like black snow into his broth. "Unless you are lucky enough to be Sent, that is. But since you are a Crusader, I suspect Yevon will provide a summoner. I shall count myself lucky, then," the Al Bhed mused aloud, hearing the melody of his own words play at satisfaction. "If you die on the battlefield, at least I will not have to be concerned over your fiend knocking on my door and being impolite to the guests."

Looking up while he offered the grinder over, Rin stopped short as he noticed Nooj's face. The teenager had gone pale beneath his sun-baked tan.

Years of calculations clicked together.

"Yevon. That is why, isn't it." Rin felt his expression grow equally bloodless as he slowly turned the answer over in his mind, examining what had finally been caught. "You aren't a Crusader to serve Bevelle, or to find an easy way to die. You only do it because you need a summoner."

He expected Nooj's denial. Instead, the Al Bhed watched the mystery of Nooj's eyes dropping away, closing like a bird in a snowstorm to plunge down into death.

"_Taydrcaagan_." Against that long-familiar reclusiveness, Rin pressed. "Tell me. I have asked you often enough. Tell me, this once."

When the teenager answered, his voice was uncommonly subdued.

"My village... was attacked three years ago by Sin." Down the hall, Rin could hear distant cat-calls as the Al Bhed bantered over dinner. Inside his office, he could barely pick out Nooj's words, faint as candle-smoke. "My father was killed. So was my older brother--they both ran out, trying to defend the farmland as if two bodies could possibly change fate.

"After they died, my mother... was affected by Sin's toxin when we tried to drag their remains away to see if we could find a healer in time. I was affected too. When I fell asleep that night, I didn't wake up for a week. They thought I was dead.

"But my mother never recovered." Nooj lowered the fork in his hand, allowing the metal to tilt off his knuckles and gradually find its rest against the tray. "Her mind was lost in the past--she thought that I was a kid again. They had to have nursemaids to keep track of her so that she didn't wander off, calling out after things that weren't there.

"When I came out of my coma, everyone expected me to be just like her." Nooj's fingers opened. The fork fell out; he kept his hand spread, watching it. "Sometimes, I think I still am affected. Nothing's seemed the same after Sin's toxin. Everything's... unimportant."

Rin, finding his own appetite vanished, set his bread down upon the tray as he listened to the private confession. Nooj refused to look up, reciting his life into his own soup bowl. Toneless. Each word, dropped as methodically as the teenager had forced himself step by step down the Agency's halls, preferring numbed nerves over weakness.

"We didn't have a summoner in the area, so many of the dead became fiends. The survivors were forced to pull together a war band to defend what was left. My mother had to be locked in her room so she wouldn't break out looking for our family. Half of the survivors were killed in the second wave, but they refused their rest at the Farplane and kept wandering, trying to protect the village. Many of them became monsters themselves. No one could tell them apart after a few days. Not from the living, and not from the fiends.

"We were only saved when a band of Yevon's Crusaders came through. The squads always try to travel with at least one summoner nearby, you see. If they don't, the squad pays for one to come, and can receive compensation from the temples. That's how they cleaned out my village. Otherwise, we would have all been wiped out."

"The Crusaders took me in when I claimed I was an orphan. No one expects you to be able to last to old age in the Crusaders--not really. Either you drop out and retire, or the fiends catch up with you." At last, the teenager looked up, wrestling himself out of the distant hallucination of his past. "You've decided that you want to live. I don't. Death takes everything in this world. I _know_ that. But I don't want to end up like my mother--lifeless while still breathing. I can't accept that, and it keeps me up at nights. I think about the fiends of my village, about how the cycle never ends." Brown eyes closed; the teenager shook his head. "When I die this time, I want to make sure I'm Sent. I don't want to have to wake up again. That's all."

The bread was cold against Rin's palm.

"I see." The Al Bhed, speaking, found himself startled at the sound of his own voice. The interjection hovered, uncertain of its place in the weary atmosphere of Nooj's long disclosure. He cleared his throat; finding no inspiration for words, the Al Bhed tried again. "And Yevon disapproves of active suicide. So that is your motivation. I had... wondered why you chose such a contradictory means of leaving this world."

"Now you know." In a failing twist of his mouth, Nooj hunted out Rin's gaze and tried to smirk at it. He only succeeded in appearing tired. "So tell me... are you going to keep trying to convince me that living is worth it?"

Rin met brown eyes with his own. He hesitated, and then wondered if Guado merchants and Crusaders both perceived Al Bhed pupils in the same way.

"I do not like to lie, _taydrcaagan_." The claim was familiar. Rin offered it anyway, to the resignation of both their years. "So, there is nothing for me to say."

They finished dinner in silence, spoons dipping into the broth. The metal caught the lights of the study and spun it back into glossy reflections on the walls. Night grew in dark around them and consumed the world outside the windows; trapped inside an emptiness that had only one door out, both Rin and Nooj avoided looking at one another, heads lowered while the minutes slipped away.

They sat, isolated, until the torches were set out in rings around the Travel Agency, joining strings of candles as the Al Bhed of Mi'ihen drank to another year of life.


	5. Chapter 5

"_Achoo!_"

"Rin -"

"Not," the man grimaced, rubbing at his face with a handkerchief, "another word."

The fading of winter was gradual for Mi'ihen's Highroad - cooler temperatures moved on as easily as they had arrived, packing their bags in the manner of considerate houseguests and leaving little to be remembered by. One morning saw frost on the windows, and the next, panes of glass standing open to let the sun flood in. The advent of summer was near, and for the Al Bhed, warmer days brought welcome relief.

For one man, they also brought allergies.

Spring rains were heaviest in the start of the year, and the Al Bhed who worked at the Travel Agency were forced to ferry in wood chips to keep the Highroad from melting away. Swollen with humidity, the chips provided a solid pathway through the yawning ditches that sprung up with every round of erosion. Cartwheels creaked as they trundled over the makeshift road; travelers complained of muddy shoes, and one man claimed that he lost an entire chocobo in a puddle.

The renewal of the year also marked the start of numerous weddings. Two of Rin's employees had finally decided to finalize their union, and Mi'ihen's Travel Agency was planning ahead for the ceremony. The match was a fitting one, in gossip's general opinion - he was lazy, but she was an excellent shot with a wrench from halfway across the room. A good combination.

Mi'ihen buzzed with activity. Jests were made, challenges bandied about of sexual prowess, and overall, spirits rose so high that they clamored at the Agency's roof before laughing free out the windows.

Rin, however, was miserable.

"Why can you not use the trees from Mushroom Rock?" The complaint was thick, mumbled through a haze of bleary eyes. Sprawled against the doorway, Rin squinted out at the lane; coated with muddied shards, the entire Highroad looked like an elaborate coconut-chopped dessert. "Those ones, I have no difficulty being around. Instead you choose the ones from Kilika. I protest your tastes."

The man he was speaking to only barked a withered laugh, intent on the machina casing in his hands. "Not enough of them grow in that wasted place. Be happy with what you get, Rin-_myt_. If you can live in a desert, you can survive a little head cold."

"Zanni," Rin began.

Gruff amusement colored the machinist's voice. He set the screwdriver aside on his tray, gnarled fingers automatically selecting the next size up without having to look. "It's ill luck to _pedlr_ during marriage plans, so be quiet before I send you to sit in your room like a little _pnyd_ boy."

"_My_ room?" Stung, Rin found his lip curling in a snarl. "I _own_ this place!"

"And I'm old enough to have dressed your mother's diapers." Zanni gave a disdainful snort, tilting his chin in the air. Fearless, the mechanic jerked a finger out, aiming directly at Rin's chest. "You're blocking my light. Go mope in a place where you'll be useful."

Wounded pride sent the founder of the Travel Agency slinking back to his office. He deviated to the kitchens long enough to lay claim to half the bottles of wine, demanding them as a medicinal remedy, and shoved the crate all the way down the hall to the tune of his own grumbles.

It was in the middle of what Rin privately decided was the worst hangover of his life that Nooj reappeared.

No one expected the act of social grace that brought the teenager back to Mi'ihen Highroad without a scheduled maintenance appointment for his prosthetic limbs. The event was an accident, or so most of the Al Bhed assumed - errors in the Crusader bookings, a reshuffling of ranks that left Nooj's unit doubled up in cheap hotel rooms. Others bet on emergency machina repairs, or chocobo delays. None of them chose on the side of sentimentalism, but the truth was that, when all the pocket-gil wagers had been paid, Nooj visited the Travel Agency early that spring. Alone.

The teenager made a breezy excuse within two steps inside, passing off the location of his fellow soldiers as stuck in Luca due to a shoopuf incident. Yes, he could use a tune-up of his limbs. No, there were no new scars to be had. Dragging himself along with a curiously sanguine expression, Nooj returned each joke made with equal spirit, ignoring none of the camaderie that was offered his way.

Rin found himself drawn out of hibernation by the sound of Nooj's voice, chasing the echoed tidbits as they bounced their way down to his office. He leaned against the corner of the hall, hands tucked into the nests of his pockets, shoulders rigid. "_Taydrcaagan_," he called out, properly aloof. And then, "Welcome back."

It took a moment before Nooj broke off in the middle of a particularly lively anecdote about a practice drill, and then he was looking up. "Rin." His voice was similarly detached, proud along the arch of his nose. "Good to see you."

Nooj had changed dramatically in the time he had been away. With the loss of his arm, the teenager had finally switched out of Crusader leathers and into a crimson body stocking that would allow swift attachment of his prosthetic straps. His long swatch of hair, rich as a waterfall of molasses when loose, now seemed permanently bound in a quirky ponytail that glistened with the tell-tale sheen of fixative gels. Muscles which might have shrunk from disuse remained firm, operating in conjunction with his artificial limbs as the teenager hauled himself down the last few steps towards where the Travel Agency founder lounged.

Rin resisted the urge to sneeze on him.

Brown eyes sparked with challenge. Nooj, shifting his weight on his cane, offered forth the first volley. "So, did you remember to celebrate?"

Rin found himself staring blankly. "Celebrate _what?_"

"My birthday." Pulling himself upright, Nooj flicked at the fur ruff on his shoulder, falsifying indifference. "I turned nineteen last week."

Rin blinked.

When provided with no praise, the teenager glowered. "Which means I've stayed alive another year. No thanks to _you_," he added, poise slipping away into a familiar irritation, one that snapped and grumbled like a beast chained to a pole.

"Congratulations," Rin retorted, crisp and neat. "Shall I tell you how most Al Bhed celebrate such an event? I am certain any number of individuals here would be willing to take to your bed, if you petition them properly."

"No, thank you."

A twitch of his nose, and Rin found his eyes watering as his sinuses began a tickle. "You've interrupted me during a very important stage of my health," he informed the teenager. "If you do not allow me to return to my tonic, then I believe I will die in the hall from tree-chip overdose. I intend to alert my employees that _you_ will have to clean up any mess."

Nooj's lips made a tart smirk in the corner, a tightening of flesh that was too curved to hide the fact of amusement. "Very well," he agreed, flourishing a bow of his head. "Lead on."

The office was far enough removed from the main entrance that the clamor had nearly died out by the time the both of them had lurched their way down the hall. Rin shoved his door open with the side of his hand, too bleary to care about theatrics around the teenager. Any surprise at Nooj's appearance only lasted for a short while; as far as the Al Bhed was concerned, now that conversation was in full swing, Nooj could go hang himself.

In the meantime, handkerchiefs took higher priority.

Nooj, navigating through the maze of paper stacks and empty bottles, stopped to nod back at the rest of the Agency. "I noticed you changed the décor," he remarked. A tap of his cane against one bottle and it tipped over, thudding with a hollow clunk on the carpet. "Permanent remodeling?"

"You came in time for Cirra and Hallo's marriage decision, so now they can stop bothering us all with their dinner-time flirtations and start demanding we change the curtains." Sorting through the crate by his desk, Rin pulled out a fresh bottle and braced it against his leg, struggling gamely with the cork. With deceptive carelessness, he tossed forth the next question. "Do you plan to wish them good fortune?"

"I might."

Caught off-guard by the uncharacteristic joviality, Rin blinked. The corkscrew squeaked in his hand. "You are a spring child," the Al Bhed stated. "Cold as winter for the mornings, and then rainy for the rest - not balmy as summer when my employees joke with you. Perhaps no one else wonders if you have been replaced by a fiend. I have my suspicions."

Nooj attempted a tight smile once more; the expression betrayed itself with a wince when the wine-cork popped, a hollow _tok_ of noise that released a flood of alcohol fumes into the air. He lowered himself into the seat across from Rin, glancing away even as the Al Bhed began to pour a fresh glass. "I had someone translate what you told me back on the Moonflow," he offered instead, dodging the accusation, "that day you rode to see me, so long ago."

It took a few seconds for recall, but Rin dredged the phrase out of memory. _Fyga ib, tispycc._ "Oh?"

"It wasn't very flattering."

"I have no idea what you are talking about," Rin claimed. The lie tasted good with the wine; tart grapes stung at a throat coated with slime. Another healthy swallow, and the Al Bhed decided that any white mages were fools for prescribing teas as their remedies. Alcohol was far superior. "Indeed, I am amazed you remember it at all. Would you like a glass to drink?" Waiting for Nooj's slow, eventual nod, Rin pointed at the bottle. "Pour it yourself. You should be capable."

Unruffled, Nooj only repeated that same, strained smile. "You're in a bad temper today. Are weddings so painful?"

"And you are in a good mood." Finding honesty sneaking from his mouth, Rin resorted to a cold stare. "That alone makes me suspicious, _taydrcaagan_. There is something you are not telling me, and I doubt that it involves your birthday."

Again, that flash of defiance. It moved like quicksilver underneath Nooj's skin, surfacing briefly through the outer layer of charm. "Just because we have an arrangement, it doesn't mean you have a right to my life," he snapped.

"No," Rin began, vocal inertia propelling him along in a rush before he realized he had no justification. "No," he repeated instead, quietly, "I do not. But tell me anyway."

Nooj chose silence for the time it took to reach for an empty glass of his own, filling the cup nearly to the brim. The dark liquid shivered in its bowl. He watched it as if hypnotized; eventually, when he spoke, it was as if the teenager was as distant as the Farplane, separated from the troubles of the living at last.

"I'm going to be enrolling in a special training academy soon." Words carefully detached, light as feathers. "The Maesters took note of me when I was fitted with these." Nooj's fingers lifted, tapping them against his spectacles. "They determined that I was eligible for their course. It's meant to be a selection process for the elite of the Crusaders. Those who come out highest in the class will gain a commanding position. There are only a small number picked; we'll be assigned in teams of three, with a recorder watching us at all times. It is... we have been told that it is quite an honor simply to be selected."

Rin found himself coughing a wet laugh. "Let me guess? This course is terribly hazardous, which is the only reason you agreed to sign up." Another twitch of his nose, and he took a deep sip to keep his allergies stifled. "Should I be surprised?"

"Active combat is supposed to be a part of this, yes." Nooj made his admission gracefully, swirling his wine with a shift of his wrist. "We'll be tested against fiends, or so they say."

"And Yevon has not caught on yet that you are incapable of this in your current state. Well done," Rin informed him over the lip of his cup, his fingers making a crescent-moon around the glass. "You've won."

"Not yet." Unapologetic, Nooj shrugged one shoulder. The fur on his pauldron whispered, smelling faintly of musk and the wood-chips from the road. "Before, I always had a squadron of other Crusaders around. The fiend that took my arm would have had the rest of me if they hadn't been able to stop it. This time," he continued, staring into the distance of Rin's office, warm approval filling his voice, "I will make sure that no one will try to keep me from my wish. Not this time."

Rin paused in mid-sip. When he lowered his glass, he wiped his thumb against his mouth to catch a stray drop. "If you are hoping that _I_ care enough to say otherwise," he accused stiffly, "then I should remind you that I am sick, not drunk. I ask because I am curious. Nothing more."

Reaching out, Nooj claimed the bottle. He titled the neck forward, refilling Rin's cup even though the Al Bhed had barely finished off half. "I'm hoping you won't remember this conversation," he stated, matter-of-fact. "I think it'd make it easier."

"Make what?"

Nooj's face turned away again, back into that private fantasy just over Rin's shoulder. "Nothing."

Rin fought down the urge to grab the teenager's chin and steer it towards him until he could imprison Nooj's pupils with his own. Instead, he fumbled for words. "You are being reckless," he tried, discarding the angle immediately as he realized the futility of it. "This effort will only be another ruin, and then you will need a third false limb. Did we not already discuss this?"

Nooj looked undaunted. "I am a deathseeker." Again, his fingers gripped the wine bottle, adding liquid into Rin's glass until it threatened to overspill the rim. "I hunt for my own destruction, you know that. Have another drink."

Thwarted, Rin shoved his cup away.

It slid an inch before it was interrupted by Nooj's metal hand, set down as an impassive barrier on the table.

The motion caused the wine to slop onto the artificial fingers; tiny grape rivers dribbled down the teenager's knuckles, bloodying joints that never would never be privy to veins. Rin found himself staring at the inorganic lump of Nooj's thumb, an object so innately comfortable as machina and yet providing itself as an enemy now.

"There is something ill with your mind," the Al Bhed decided aloud. "In all this time, I have never seen you look like you do now."

"And how is that?"

"Excited." Rin wrinkled his nose, radiating as much disapproval as he could manage with a skull clogged full of his own mucus. He tossed his head up, regretting the motion instantly as his temples began to pound. Across the desk, Nooj's eyes hovered, smug. "If I had a word, it would be _aroused_. At your own impending death. You lust for it as you could a woman."

Nooj's grin was breathless in its execution. "We all have to want _something_."

The wine was making Rin's lips heavy. Too numb to determine a frown, the Al Bhed mentally shoved at the combined haze of illness and alcohol. He ordered his fingers to keep Nooj's attention; vaguely, he noticed they were obeying him by gripping the teenager's wrist. "Yes," he replied, hard, willing Nooj's attention on his words. "We do. We have to want something. Why don't you start? It is not difficult. If anything, I have found that it is only...too easy."

Only when Nooj rotated his hand did Rin realize he had grabbed the wrong limb. The spilled wine made the metal joints slick, cool and careless.

Then Nooj's other palm was on the Al Bhed's knuckles, warm flesh closing over Rin's, skin against skin.

"It's been four years." Refusing to look at the Al Bhed directly, Nooj only held the physical contact. "Four years, and two body parts, and I'm still not any closer to my goal." Soft, almost desperate in his ramblings, the teenager spoke in a murmur that nearly drowned in the background clamor of the Agency. "I don't know why I came to tell you of all people this. Do I honestly think it would change anything? That you might say to me -"

Nooj's body heat was higher than the Al Bhed expected. That or the wine was to blame; despite his self-control, Rin found himself making a slight hiss as he watched one of Nooj's fingers crook, tracing the tendon on the back of the Al Bhed's hand.

At the noise, Nooj stopped. "I should leave," he announced abruptly, and let go.

Like a mechanical insect, the teenager unfolded himself from his chair, reaching for his cane. Rin found his hand pulled away from Nooj's metal bones, all his strength leeched away from the wine. "_Taydrcaagan_ -"

"You can tell Zanni that he doesn't have to worry about upgrading the knee joint," Nooj stated, blithely speaking over Rin's protests. "And let him know that I haven't seen better work anywhere else. I think he'd like to know that."

"_Nooj_."

At last, the teenager stopped.

Caught in the trap of only one sentence's worth of time, Rin opened his mouth. Wine-haze rose from his tongue into his nose; struck mute by the _unfairness_ of the situation, and uncertain why, Rin took a breath and tried again.

"If I do not see you afterwards, _taydrcaagan_," he began, fighting the words out in coherent order as he felt a coeurl's worth of anger roaring in protest, "I will be sure to bill your squad."

Nooj's face performed one last, painfully familiar smirk.

"Goodbye, Rin. _Kuutpoa. Kuutpoa_."


	6. Epilogue

It was well past the height of summer before Rin drank to excess again.

Operation Mi'ihen had been a rumor that quickly inflated into fact. What had started as an infiltration of the Crusaders' pocketbooks had elevated to a project far more grand than any tradesman's wiles; no one had thought that the Crusaders would actually betray Yevon's teachings in order to combat Sin, but as the season rolled on, and more soldiers began to arm themselves with high-grade rifles, the truth could not be ignored. The Crusaders were escalating the war. They were willing to ignore their own prejudices to do so.

The world was changing.

Because of this, their exile was almost guaranteed. Condemnation for machina use was a fate which the Al Bhed had been expecting; the number of Crusaders who chose to defy Yevon was not. That alone won the loyalty of even the most suspicious digger. Firing ranges were set up, studding the lines of Mushroom Rock, and the crack of powder-shot was the first wakeup call come dawn.

It was a rare union of two forces, those warriors ordained by Yevon and the machina-clan outcast by the same. Such an act was nothing short of miraculous.

From a merchant's view, however, it was a disaster.

Sales were low, since many of the Al Bhed had chosen to donate materials to the Crusaders' efforts. While the popularity of machina was at a high, the verdict of Yevon rippled out to even the smallest village, slamming the label of _exile_ with an indiscriminate hand. Those who wished to win favor with Bevelle refused every hint of Al Bhed technology, barring entire villages from available trades.

Profit margins had suffered. Employment had as well. So long as the Crusaders' march was in effect, many of the Al Bhed had volunteered to assist them, temporarily abandoning their jobs to chase a dream of Sin's defeat. What began as a financial venture had mutated into quite the opposite. In order to retain certain measures of public face, Rin was forced to surrender precious materials to a martyr's cause. Everything was a loss. It was a nightmare of accounting.

To make matters worse, the staff of the Mi'ihen Travel Agency decided to reorganize their vacation time. The mystery was how it all coincided with the Operation which the Crusaders were cobbling together; no one told Rin to his face, but they assumed he saw through their lies, knew why bags were being packed and notes left in the night. The founder was a force of mercantile ruthlessness. None of them could pull one over his eyes.

Aging relatives spontaneously popped into being, requiring the staff to leave immediately under the geas of familial obligations. Mysterious illnesses cropped up. Emergency repairs were concocted. At one point, the founder sat up at the front door and caught three chocobo handlers trying to smuggle their gear in a wheelbarrow; after he explained rather pointedly how there was barely even a skeleton crew left and any further absences would result in no Agency to return to, the desertions stopped.

Sales were ruined. Half the remaining Mi'ihen employees were of the opinion that Rin should choose to expand into blitzball instead, in order to recoup the losses ahead of time. One professional blitz team had heard about the founder's athletic ability, and had been peppering the mail with steady contract offers. Sin could come and go, could be slain for one decade before reappearing for ten. Blitzball, they all agreed, was a glutton's market.

Sports were the heated topic of the day when the Deathseeker returned to Mi'ihen's Travel Agency. He arrived with the announcement of rifle shots.

Most of the workers had already scattered for the daily chores, forced to herd chocobos in limited pastures, doubling up schedules in order to compensate with those who had been lucky enough to desert. Hallon and Cirra - two of the only Al Bhed who were content to remain at Mi'ihen - had finally triumphed in their marriage preparations and were readying themselves to inflict the actual event.

Nooj's repeated efforts to call for help had cracked one of the windows, his sturdy cane thumping against the chunky glass. It rattled the ornamental drapes which had been strung up by Hallon earlier that day, scraping at tattoo-marks painted vivid blue on peach, tribute to Cirra's belly.

When the noise did not stop for several minutes, the Al Bhed workers flooded out. First in curiosity, and then in a swarm, babbling questions in such haste that half of them swapped and out of their native tongue without realizing it.

"What are you doing here?"

"_Ryja oui paah vilgat po Yevon_?" 

"Why are there dead people in the road?"

"Who - "

Through the storm of voices, Nooj raised his own. "We ran into trouble with - yes - Yevon." The young man's bark skipped across the walls, a carefully harsh sound that smashed through the chatter of the Al Bhed. "We managed to drive them back for a short while, and make it all the way here before we collapsed. I can't carry them in. Can you help - Rin."

Startled by the name, the workers turned as one, following the direction of Nooj's gaze to discover the Agency's founder standing frozen in the doorway.

Finding everyone's attention upon him, Rin made a soft click in his throat.

"I heard noises," he muttered at last. His eyes flicked from the bodies on the Highroad, to the employees, and finally back to Nooj. Detaching himself from the building, the man stepped outside; a motion of one hand and several Al Bhed were scuttling to the task, examining the casualties for bullet wounds and blood loss. "I assume I can expect the trouble was yours?"

"Those 'noises' were them shooting at us," the teenager retorted without missing a beat, acid-mouthed. "If you don't bring us all inside, they'll come back and catch us here."

Curiously enough, Rin did not move immediately to the task, despite the gravity of the situation. Instead, he only glanced at the crumpled, bleeding soldiers once more. "Are these... your Crusader friends?"

"Technically." Straightening his shoulders, Nooj gave a jerky shake of his head. "Yevon excommunicated everyone, but they still had Maesters spying on us. We don't have much time. You'll hide these people from Bevelle's soldiers, won't you?"

Silence.

"Rin."

"_Yho cdnid chybc frah ed ec dekrdahat_," the Mi'ihen founder answered eventually, slow, his tone betraying nothing of the old proverb's bile. His hand came up, scrubbed at his face. Taking this as their cue, the Al Bhed began to strip rags from their belts to serve as impromptu rope, practiced wariness in their gestures as they knelt and began to rig up carry-leashes. Death was not foreign to them, but neither were Unsent. There were no summoners near Mi'ihen. The Agency had to fend for itself.

It took six of them three trips to get everyone inside. Rin stood back at the doorway, Nooj leaning across from him; the pair were gargoyle statues faced off for eternity, stone-eyed and waiting while mortals scurried past. The woman was easiest, being physically light. Her recording machina was dumped beside her on a chair, still whining as its shattered lens tried to memorize data, whirring its tinny plea until one Al Bhed reached out and thumbed it off.

The swaddled coat of the tanned Yevonite took more care to handle without its lacings getting every which way, so he was dropped on the floor and shunted to last position for medical treatment.

Rin broke his vigil as the last body was carried through. "That one is an Al Bhed," he remarked aloud, deceptively light. "Speaking of which, I would like to know if you have seen - "

"All dead." Gouging a hole through Rin's oblique musings, Nooj tightened his grip on his cane. "Every last one, and Yevon will be coming down this way in a matter of hours. If you're lucky, it'll be that long," he continued, ignoring the stifled gasp of one of the workers. "When they come here, I'd recommend you claim ignorance of the Operation. They might not connect the corpses of your workers to this establishment."

"Impossible." Automatically contradictory, Rin shook his head. Bland, pragmatic, he challenged the decree. "You cannot tell me that most of my... employees are gone. The fighting addled your sight. You are incorrect."

"_I saw them_." The roar tore out of Nooj's chest, muted barely enough for speaking volume. "They were lying in pieces across the beach - the ones that weren't completely annihilated. Legs torn off, arms severed, bellies ripped wide open from fiends. I saw _all _your people, Rin. Death has them now."

In a corner of the room, a woman gasped and dropped a wad of bandages to cover her ears, trying to block out the teenager's words.

Nooj continued to speak. "Sin destroyed them. Yevon sacrificed them as a lesson," he pressed, cynicism bleeding from each word. "Yevon chose it, and everyone died. In Spira, there is no other choice. They were fools to believe otherwise and deserved their fate - "

A hiss, and Rin's lips closed again, hiding teeth that had been bared in warning. "Do _not_ say such things in front of people who have lost their friends to such a choice."

Only gradually did Nooj seem to realize the effect that his news had wrought upon the Agency. One man had turned for the doorway, stumbling raggedly down the hall as he shook his head in denial. The medics who were carefully peeling away bloodied leather did so with trembling hands, their expressions grim and ruthless while they measured the pulse of the unconscious bodies.

"I need to leave." Broken, abrupt, Nooj blinked and shook his head, looking dazed for a moment. His voice melted, returning to its normal sparse diction. "There might still be some Crusaders alive who know me, and I need to speak with them before Yevon gets their hands on them. You must give me passage to Luca, and swiftly. From there, I need to take one of your transport ships to Kilika. We must hurry."

Rin drew back as a cat might recoil, shoulders hunched, physically balking from the direct orders. "No. You are not telling me the entire story - "

"I don't have _time._" Again, that strained mix of desperation and aggression, Nooj's gaze refusing to fix on Rin's. Instead it skittered like marbles on a floor, cherry-stone hearts zipping around the ankles of those gathered. "I need to go swiftly. You must let me leave _now_."

The Al Bhed exchanged glances and bandages; the water in the washbasin turned red with Crusader blood.

"You are insane." Rin's voice was faintly astonished. The news sent him pounding towards the door, through the throng of Al Bhed who pressed back against the walls in an effort to keep from being trampled. "Oppil," he snapped out, calling for the worker who had already fled in mourning. "Call a medic to restrain the _taydrcaagan_ for Sin's toxin - "

And then Nooj was on him.

Far more deft than he should have physically been capable, the Deathseeker launched himself into motion. Rin got as far as five steps down the hall before Nooj caught him. Throwing out a metal palm, the teenager slammed the Al Bhed into the beige stucco, squashing him in a blow that caused Rin's lungs to cough out all their oxygen.

There was something intimately _wrong_ about the Deathseeker's joints; the ease with which he pursued Rin, fluid as he had never been before with his crippled leg and half-hearted arm. He moved too quickly to be obeying the limits of his own body. A strangeness blazed in his amber eyes that none of them had ever seen before - and, more importantly, could not decipher.

Years of bargaining lent Rin the poise required to hold his composure. He accepted the manhandling with a businessman's decor, physically submitting even as his face promised death, spiraled pupils gone to razor-slices from the brilliance of his anger. When one of the workers dropped the handful of antiseptic rags and began to stand, Rin gave a short, sharp twist of his head in warning.

"A trick," he growled. Rudimentary, angry, but meeting Nooj's eyes square as a bird might dare the snake. "Something is not right here. You are _lying_ to me."

"Why not? You've been lying to _me_ all along." Triumphant, Nooj levered his flesh arm across Rin's chest, pinning him against an elbow. "Ever since you actually took my challenge and met me on the banks of the Moonflow, I knew that you had more invested than just cheap coin. What I haven't been able to figure out is _why_." Leaning in, the Deathseeker brushed metal fingers over Rin's mouth, smirking as he pressed at the corner of the other's lips. "Do you think you can save someone, _anyone_ from death?"

Rin, forced to speak with the taste of gun-oil and sweat against his jaw, stood his ground.

"You are not acting like yourself, _taydrcaagan_." The accusation was bland, passionless. "The fact that you have come back from such a massive battle, compounded upon by your recent attack by Yevon, makes me suspicious. I will have to ask you to stay while your health can be examined. Let go."

"Are you afraid I'm Unsent?" Hot satisfaction flowered on Nooj's face, pulling his eyes low in pleasure. He shifted his weight, bearing the mechanical leg against Rin's hip. Metal ground into Rin's thigh as Nooj leaned in, twisting the artificial knee joint like a lever. "Don't worry, I'm very much alive. Isn't that funny? Alive. Living again. Such a perfect opportunity for it, too. And you're too relieved that I am to do anything about it. You wouldn't risk your... _investment_ by stopping me here. That's what it's all about, isn't it?" Nooj's lips twitched, revealing the points of his teeth as he grinned. "Your _pocketbook_."

Rin tried to make a reply, and instead found Nooj's thumb in the way, pressing down upon the Al Bhed's tongue. The words came out gagged; a twitch of Rin's shoulders was the sole warning before the founder tried to jerk his head back, only to succeed in striking the wall behind him with a dull bump. Rather than cry out in pain, the man chose to glare instead, disdain simmering off him as viciously as desert heat.

If Nooj was bothered by the hostility, he did not stop. "That's the thing about you, Rin. You won't admit otherwise. Just save yourself the trouble. Agree."

The unpleasant hum of the Deathseeker's voice buzzed, bouncing off the walls. It rang like herald's bells, announcing a reverberation of _something_ just about to surface, inhuman and cruel, emerging like a wet beast from Nooj's throat. His prosthetic fingers flexed like snakes as he forced his touch on the Agency's founder; none of the stiffness of pressurized joints, but with all the deftness of a flesh hand.

Impossible.

Upon seeing this, one mechanic hissed, touching his wrench in superstition as if the metal's presence alone could ward away a fiend.

The gesture caused the workers to stir, uneasy. There was no force on Spira that could animate machina other than electricity - not unless you believed the more superstitious of the Al Bhed at Home, who would claim that particularly dense pyrefly concentrations caused haywire glitches, unexplained phenomena.

Old tales. Nonsense. Childhood stories, and nothing more.

But Nooj's sudden babble made no sense either. Something from the carnage had entered his blood like a disease, rotting him from the inside-out, and now that madness was grinning directly at the Mi'ihen founder.

"_Agree_, Rin. You don't understand how much better it will be if you do."

"I will _not_help you. Not like this," the Al Bhed retaliated, enunciating slowly around the finger between his teeth, spit leaking down the side of Nooj's palm with each word.

Nooj jostled his hip, forcing Rin to visibly wince as metal bearings ground against tender flesh. "You will do everything," the teenager insisted, a foreign glee brimming his voice. "I... know you _better_ than that. But we're out of time together." Sliding away from the Al Bhed, Nooj took a step back, wiping his hand dry on the side of his leg. "Is there anything you want to say before I go?"

Rin took the time to straighten out his vest, a short tug that betrayed the deeper anger within. He did not look directly at the Deathseeker, but only vowed his response to the ground.

"I believe all we could say to each other would only be lies, _taydrcaagan._"

Nooj inclined his head in acknowledgment. Then he smiled.

"I look forward to our future engagements, Rin. There are so many plans."

Leaving the wounded to their sleep, the Al Bhed clustered at the Agency's front door as Nooj strode towards the hovers. He hauled himself easily into a passenger seat, yanking up his cane in an afterthought and balancing it over one knee. The driver, unaware of what had transpired inside the building, only nodded to the orders given before cranking up the engines.

The hover machina took off, chugging down the road.

Silence hung over the Agency.

"Rin," one man began, a confused, cog-whined note.

"Be silent." Rubbing his chest with his fingers, a tight circle of pressure that whitened his sunbaked skin, Rin frowned. "Whatever it is you have to say, I do not wish to hear it. The _taydrcaagan_ has decided to embark on his own affairs. We may engage in business relations with him in the future, if the price is right. Otherwise, our relationship is terminated."

"Rin -"

A snap of his hand, and Rin was glaring at the summer-scuffed Highroad, blue eyes wild and fierce. The swirl-pupils stood out in sharp focus, slashes of black that spiraled inwards to the privacy of the man's thoughts.

Far in the distance, the _chuff_ of the machina hover faded, and then died, erasing itself even as the dust was slow in settling.

"This is the truth," Rin decided at last. "It can be nothing else."

The next morning, Rin showed up just in time to take his seat of honor during the wedding. He blamed the bloodshot threads in his eyes on alcohol. Hallon and Cirra radiated satisfaction as they repeated their commitment vows; Rin led the applause that thundered on their promises of _loyalty beyond life_, rising to his feet with his back straight and his wrists stiff. He uncorked bottles of fresh wine for the celebration afterwards, but when they looked for him during the dancing, he was gone.


End file.
